Microsoft Board Member Leads Women in STEM

Harvey Mudd College President, Maria Klawe, Board member to Microsoft and engine of the increase of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at Mudd to 40%, has organized an online mentoring group of more than 300 prominent STEM women to mentor young women collegians in the field.

As the New York Times reported this morning.

To help raise th[e]numbers [of women in STEM], Dr. Klawe has lined up six prominent women as lead mentors, including Mae C. Jemison, the first black female astronaut; Jacqueline K. Barton, the chairwoman of the chemistry department at Caltech; and Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology officer — as well as nearly 300 other mentors.

They will answer questions submitted online by students at any of the universities participating in the project, which is known as Women in Technology Sharing Online, or WitsOn.

It reproduces itself every day. It was leadership guru Gloria Feldt, my activist mentor, who gave me a visual image for the informal but powerful national women’s movement now underway.

“If each woman in power brings along along with her,” Feldt – author of No Excuses – said to me one day, “we can move these numbers of women in leadership from the teens to thirty or forty percent pretty quickly.”

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That’s so neat Victoria. Love the lily pad analogy. How do you think that online experiment will translate to on the job mentoring? and how will the MOOC ladies avoid giving run of the mill answers? There is an impersonalness to the process that might daunt a few young women…

I mentor lots of young women myself, primarily online and on the telephone. I don’t find either of them to be too impersonal. It’s true that I pay more attention to those young people who pester me most and ask me specific questions and make appointments for coffee (if they’re local) and engage with me on social media. Success comes to the persistent; the ones who walk past their fear (no one in her 20s is fearless); and, the ones who make the decision, come hell or high water, that they’re going to succeed. Still, many young people don’t need ALL that much from us – a little course correction once in awhile; a kind and encouraging word. Now SPONSORSHIP is an entirely different (and much more value-laden) proposition, requiring someone “inside” to put her skin in a young woman’s game. This requires a strong sense of self for the sponsor; a belief that she will not be “brought down” by her sponsee. It requires much more work but most of the business think-tanks say it’s sponsorship, not mentorship, that’s necessary to move women UP. To move them into the game, I think, mentorship is enough but they need to want it as badly as you and I did!